How to Train Your Brain to Stay Positive

As an entrepreneur, conquering challenge and failure is
essential to the success of your business. You can learn
to cultivate that resilience by training your brain to stay
positive when times are tough.
"People tend to have a cognitive bias toward their
failures, and toward negativity," says Matthew Della
Porta, a positive psychologist and organizational
consultant. Our brains are more likely to seek out
negative information and store it more quickly to
memory.
Of course, that bias is not always bad. Acknowledging
problems and facing failures can lead us to better
solutions. But too often, we go overboard, and beat
ourselves up for our failures or let ourselves dwell in the
negative.
By consciously increasing our focus on the positive, we
start to even the balance. We find a happy medium
where we can address failures and challenges without
letting them get us down, leaving us more motivated,
productive, and likely to succeed.
Try these three tips to help you train your brain to stay
positive
1. Express gratitude.
Negative events loom large unless you consciously
balance them out. "When you're faced with challenges,
it's important to take stock of what's going well," Della
Porta says. Thinking about the good in your life can help
balance that bias, giving your brain the extra time it
needs to register and remember a positive event.
To help your brain store positive events, reflect on what
you're grateful for and why at least once a week. Write
down your blessings, such as the opportunity to pursue
a career you love or a family that supports you. If you
prefer a daily habit, then keep a nightly log of good
things that happened that day. "Just keep it very short,"
Della Porta says. "If you try to hammer [gratitude] home,
then it becomes mundane." Day One, a journaling app
for Apple devices ($4.99), or OhLife, a free email-based
journal, can to help you do this.
2. Repeat positive affirmations.
As any politician or advertiser knows, the more often
you hear a message, the more likely you are to believe
it. The same goes for messages about who you are and
what you are capable of doing. By repeating positive
affirmations with conviction several times each morning,
you are training your brain to believe them. "Over time,
you'll start to internalize them," Della Porta says. Repeat
your affirmations silently if you feel self-conscious.
Choose two to three affirmations that represent your
values and goals, such as 'I can handle whatever comes
my way,' 'There is plenty of time,' or 'I'm getting better
every day.' The repetition will influence the way you
interpret negative events, making you more resilient.
"Especially if you're predisposed to negative thinking,
this can be extremely effective," Della Porta says.
3. Challenge negative thoughts.
Each time a negative thought arises, we choose how to
respond. If left to our own devices, we tend to dwell. Our
brains home in on negative events so they seem much
bigger and more significant than they are. To combat
that, start by imagining the thought as separate from
yourself, as something you can observe and
deconstruct. "Get in the habit of distancing yourself
instead of dwelling," Della Porta says.
Next, challenge negative thoughts that are unfairly self-
deprecating. For example, if your startup doesn't get the
traction you hoped, you might think, "I'm a failure."
That's untrue and unproductive. Instead, practice
interpreting the same event differently. You might say, I
worked really hard but I didn't account for a quirk of the
market, so I'm disappointed, but now I'm going to try
again with new information. That interpretation is gentler,
truer, and more proactive. "At first, [this strategy will] be
hard and you'll think it doesn't work," Della Porta says.
"But over time, it'll become automatic and negative
thoughts will be less likely to come up. No one does this
naturally; you have to learn and practice.